VATTAR KRISHNA AYYANGAR Vs. JANAKI AMMAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This Civil Revision Petition, is brought against the order of the Subordinate Judge of Ramnad at Madura, dismissing an application for leave to file a suit in forma pauperis. The learned Judge found that the application was not bona fide, that the applicant had sufficient property, and that shortly before he had filed the application he had disposed of other properties. With regard to one transaction the learned Judge says: The petitioner wants the Court to believe that this was an honest transaction and was not the one intended to defraud the Government and to escape payment of court-fee.... The othi has been executed just an the eve of filing this petition just for the purpose of enabling him to file this application.

(2.) I take that to be a finding that that transaction was not put through bona fide but was put through to enable the applicant to pretend that he was a pauper when in fact he knew he was not. In the result the petition was dismissed with costs. No application appears to have been made for a time to be fixed in. which to present the plaint with a proper court-fee stamp. Such an application was necessary because the application to sue in forma pauperis was filed on the very last day of limitation. The plaintiff could not therefore simply present a plaint thereafter but, for limitation purposes, had to relate the plaint to the application to sue as a pauper. In Stuart Skinner V/s. William Orde (1878) 2 All. 241, (a decision of the Privy Council made when the Civil Procedure rules were somewhat different), it was decided that if an application to sue in forma pauperis is filed and pending disposal of that application the plaintiff by paying the amount of stamp-fees into Court admits he is no longer desirous to sue as a pauper the plaint filed, with the application will relate back to the date when the application was filed, always (assuming the application to sue in forma pauperis was made bona fide. Now it is urged before me that a Court though not asked to give time is compelled to give time by order 7, Rule 11 (c), Civil P.C. That rule provides: The plaint shall be rejected in the following cases...(c) Where the relief claimed is properly valued, but the plaint is written upon paper insufficiently stamped, and the plaintiff on being required by the Court to supply the requisite stamp paper within a time to be fixed by the Court fails to do so.

(3.) It is said that hero in fact the plaintiff has filed a plaint without any stamp, that is on a paper insufficiently stamped. In such a case the plaintiff has, it is urged, time in which to supply the requisite stamp within a time to be fixed by Court. Therefore, it is said, the Court must fix a time. But in my opinion applications for leave to sue as a pauper are not governed by Order 7, Rule 11, Civil P.C. Until the application is granted the suit cannot be regarded as instituted. If the application is refused it is true that under Section 149, Civil P.C. the Court may allow the applicant to file the plaint properly stamped within a time to be fixed. If the plaintiff then files the plaint within that time it may well be that the plaint would be deemed to have been filed when the application to sue in forma pauperis was filed. But although the Court, after dismissing the pauper application, may on application made grant a time in which to file a properly stamped plaint, it is not in my opinion compelled to do so. That is, the-matter does not fall under Order 7, Rule 11(c).